oh SH!T - net neutrality
Out of context: Reply #18
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- lukus_W0
It's a pretty complex situation - and 'net neutrality' was a bad choice of term to describe it.
If you're an ISP, you have the ability to give favour to some types of traffic over other types of traffic - which is known as 'traffic shaping'. The main question revolves around whether ISPs should be able to engage in this practice traffic shaping; and - if so - to what degree.
Why would they want to? Well, I think there are legitimate and non-legitimate reasons for allowing an ISP to do this...
To a degree, I think most ISPs must need to employ 'balancing' to ensure that service is good for the consumer.
They might choose to supply less bandwidth to peer-to-peer networking, because they feel that the majority of the traffic being used by application like bit-torrent and kazaar is dubious on legal grounds, and it's negatively affecting delivery of other forms of traffic. While I don't think this is a great situation I can appreciate the reasoning.
I think problems come when an ISP responds to commercial pressures - and tried to exploit and extract value from them.
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For example, an ISP might feel that too much of their bandwidth is being taken up by streaming video. Youtube, iPlayer and Hulu all put a relatively high strain on networks - they might choose to limit the effect that these services have on their networks. Image that one of these sites might become aware that their users are unhappy about the limits in place - e.g. Hulu might be launching in a new territory and decide that if users in the new territory don't receive their streams via a higher bandwidth pipe, they're be less likely to make a strong impact.
So, in a case like this - should the Hulu be able to pay the ISP to supply a higher bandwidth service?
In an extreme case, an ISP could actually block services and sites from their customers when it suits them - either because they have a competing product, or because they're being paid to do so.
Deals between major corporations could possibly happen without the knowledge of consumers - but could potentially go a long way to shaping the commercial landscape for years to come.
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Apart from the corporate angle - there's another avenue to the net-neutrality debate that affects consumers in a more obvious way.
Different ISP customers have varying needs and different preferences.
For example, some people are into gaming. The ISPs could become wise to this fact and might choose to allow gamers less latency when playing first-person shooters. The ISPs could probably easily alter their traffic profiles to allow for this.
In cases like this, the ISP might feel that they're able to charge the user more money to receive an especially tailored 'gaming package' .. and - in my opinion - this is where the main trouble begins.
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If an ISP is reckless and decides to cut out a rival site from the internet, or gives obvious preference to one site over another, there's a strong likelihood that people will complain and protest. I think this provides an adequate safeguard against the worst from happening.
However, if ISPs start offering varying packages to consumers under the auspice of 'choice' - protest is far more difficult. All ISPs are in the business of making money, and - imo - most ISPs would be happy to change the way they sell their services if it's profitable to do so.
So, in the worst case scenario, we have a situation where we have to pick and choose which sites and services we want to have access to - and we have to pay extra to be provided with what we have now. The ISP would no-longer be seen as a passive-gatekeeper .. as it would be actively filtering, and shaping traffic - with the full consent of paying customers.
The basic brilliance of the net has been its ability to provide a reasonably level playing field for all. If this changes, the world will be a much darker place.